At first "Straight Street" is electric Chicago blues guitar, but then the piano/drum/guitar screech becomes way arty avant-garde repetition like LaMonte Young playing with chordal overtones. As we move on, Eleanor sounds frantic. She's in Syria and everybody is talking soccer: "Teatime at Damascus computer cafe/ I'm looking busy and staring off the other way/ Leverkusen, Juventus; Leeds v. Valencia/ I'm overhearing all their nonsense in extensia." Sure, you could scoff: typical cyberpunk scenario, familiar hustle. But the music and words are so rhythmically and texturally fun to chew on that you're more occupied with the details than the frame. Plus, it's fast.

And then, slowing down, they murder the chorus, which draws its power from the blues it seemed they were mocking. Oh, by the way, that latter bit you can hear about "play the Turk" references a Hungarian named Wolfgang von Kempelen, who in 1769 set up a mechanical man over a chess board and challenged audiences to play him in an early simulacrum of artificial intelligence. Web-searched that one myself. And I bet they Web-searched it, too.